When you think about Tu B'Shvat, the New Year of the Trees, which started last night at sundown, these are not the trees you think of. These are New England trees, birches and hollies and maples and cherries and oaks, bare trees and fruitless trees and funny twisted winter trees that cling at rakish angles to the banks of ponds. These trees have the quiet power that all nature in Connecticut has, the kind I stared past for years but never saw. You can only see it if you search for it, if you take time. It's not the ripe beauty and bounty of olives and pomegranates, but grass like dry wheat, barks like peeling wallpaper, trunks the same color as their shadows. Surrounded not by multicolored desert or lush green leaves and plunging waterfalls, but by stone walls and great ancient boulders. These are tough trees that will have their New Year - their Spring - one day. But not yet.
(All photos taken at Connecticut College Arboretum.)
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